Plus 1 Problems

By Ross Little

Originally published in EUG #20

I took your suggestion about doing an amendment to Alphabet Chaser, and have also written two other games, Mastermind and Zombies. They are both cover versions of the old '80s games.

I would like to share a problem I had with my Plus 1. About last August, I bought a twin-cartridge from Slogger and ever since, up to about a month ago, every time I re-inserted the cartridge it would act as if it were dead and not respond to anything. I eventually returned it to Bill Bradbury who was very kind about the situation. I was a bit worried in case he would, quite legitimately, turn around and tell me it was too old and wouldn't help me. Quite the opposite. He took it in, and eventually got in touch with me and told me the problem. As you know, Slogger primarily sell the Rombox or Rombox+, and therefore the cartridges were manufactured to fit these. Unfortunately, it turns out that the Plus 1 cartridge slot is actually 1mm wider than the Romboxes', which can throw out of sync all the connectors, and it acts dead. However, a solution was found, which has failed neither Bill not myself, which is that when the cartridge is inserted, it should be moved firmly to the left (if it will go). It should move definitively to the left, and will then almost certainly work. This problem has never been identified before by Slogger, and therefore no solution found, but if any readers have cartridges that seem a bit dodgy on a Plus 1, this could well be the solution. Otherwise, it's back to the suggestion of cleaning the connectors, etc.

In EUG #16, Christian Weber wrote a letter talking about various aspects of EUG. I totally disagreed with him on most points (That's just my point of view!) but one thing I agreed with him about is slight editing of letters. Whilst I think it's nice that letters can be shown as they were originally written (One up on other magazines) I think it's irrelevant as to whether someone has enclosed a cheque for £2.60! These, and other such statements, should be edited out but everything else in the letters and EUG in general make this magazine near perfect. It's more and more usable and user-friendly. Keep it up.

Ross Little, EUG #20